The Brusselator is a theoretical model for an oscillating example of these reactions, the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name these reactions that are accelerated by one of their own products. The repeated breaking of that positive feedback loop is responsible for the oscillatory behaviour of clock reactions such as Belousov–Zhabotinsky.
ANSWER: autocatalytic reactions [accept autocatalysis]
[10h] For simple autocatalytic reactions, such as the conversion of a reactant to its catalyst, the graph of product concentration against time has this shape.
ANSWER: sigmoidal [or logistic; accept S-shaped]
[10e] Oscillating autocatalytic reactions were originally thought to be impossible as they were thought to violate this law, which states the total entropy of a closed system is non-decreasing.
ANSWER: second law of thermodynamics